Spending a lot of time on a dock or out on the water gets boring even for the most avid angler. That’s why it helps to have a few jokes or funny sayings in your back pocket when you and your fishing buddy are hanging out.
There’s always something to be said for being original, but there’s no shame in regurgitating some tried-and-true funny fishing quotes. Many famous people have called fishing their favorite pastime, which has produced some pretty funny quotes about this sport.
Whether you’re out on a tandem fishing kayak or one of the most expensive fishing boats, it pays to have a few friends with a good sense of humor along for the ride. If you want to be able to add your own jokes to the mix, check out this extensive collection of funny fishing quotes!
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Why Are Anglers So Funny?
Photo by Anatoliy Karlyuk via Shutterstock
Despite centuries of research, no one quite knows why fishermen seem to have such a great sense of humor. From our experience, however, we have decided on several factors that could account for the humorous nature of the angler.
- They finally let loose and let their guard down
- All that time sitting and waiting allows their minds to wander aimlessly
- The many beers consumed while fishing enhances one’s sense of humor
- A fishing pole is akin to a magic wand for coming up with good jokes and funny quotes
- Prolonged sun exposure has fried a few brain synapses
- They have listened to the fish too intently
None, some, or all of these could be true, but the funny fishing quotes we’ve collected below certainly came from somewhere!
Funny Fishing Quotes
1. “Fish come in three sizes: small, medium and the one that got away!”
2. “Dear Lord, give me the serenity to accept the size of fish I catch, the courage not to lie about it and the wisdom to know that none of my fishing buddies would believe me anyway!”
3. “The fishing was good; it was the catching that was bad.” Â ~ A. Best
4. “Early to bed, Early to rise, Fish all day, Make up lies.”
5. “Fly fishermen are born honest, but they get over it.” ~ Ed Zern
6. “Something to think about: If you fish the wrong fly long and hard enough, it will sooner or later become the right fly.” ~ John GierachÂ
7. “Good things come to those who BAIT.”
8. “Fly-fishing is the most fun you can have standing up.”
9. “There’s a fine line between fishing and just standing on the shore like an idiot.” ~ Steven Wright
10. “Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach him how to fish, and he will sit in a boat and drink beer all day.” ~ George Carlin
11. “A woman who has never seen her husband fishing, doesn’t know what a patient man she married!”
12. “If people concentrated on the really important things in life, there’d be a shortage of fishing poles.” ~ Doug LarsonÂ
13. “An angler is a man who spends rainy days sitting on a muddy bank of rivers doing nothing because his wife won’t let him do it at home.”
14. “Fishing is like dating; it’s all catch and release until you find a keeper.”
15. “Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.” ~ Henry David Thoreau
16. “My biggest worry is that my wife (when I’m dead) will try to sell my fishing gear for what I said I paid for it.” ~ Koos Brandt
17. “Fishing, with me, has always been an excuse to drink in the daytime.” ~ Jimmy Cannon
18. “The solution to any problem -work, love, money, whatever -is to go fishing, and the worse the problem, the longer the trip should be.” ~ John GierachÂ
19. “The two best times to fish are when it’s raining and when it ain’t.” ~ Patrick F. McManus
20. “Sell a man a fish, he eats for a day, teach a man how to fish, you ruin a wonderful business opportunity.”
21. “The best time to go fishing is when you can” ~ Ed Zern
22. “If I’ve gone missing, I’ve gone fishing!”
23. “Don’t tell fish stories where the people know you; but particularly, don’t tell them where they know the fish.” ~ Mark Twain
24. “Remember when your GPS and a fish finder were rolled into one trusty unit called grandpa?”
25. “A man’s “one last cast” is like a woman’s “I’ll be ready in 5 minutes!””
26. “Bragging may not bring happiness, but no man having caught a large fish goes home through an alley.” ~ Ann Landers
27. “I look into my fly box, and think about all the elements I should consider in choosing the perfect fly: water temperature, what stage of development the bugs are in, what the fish are eating right now. Then I remember what a guide told me: ‘Ninety percent of what a trout eats is brown and fuzzy and about five-eighths of an inch long.” ~ Alison Moir-Smith
28. “Give a man a fish, and he has food for a day. Teach him how to fish and you can get rid of him for the entire weekend!”
29. “Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days.”
30. “The confirmed man of trout should resolve to get along with wood ticks. Any other procedure would fail because the wood tick is determined to get along with trout fishermen.” ~ Gordon MacQuarrie
31. “I don’t always tell people where to fish, but when I do, it’s a lie.”
32. “Women know why men love to go fishing. It is the only time they will hear the words “wow, that’s a big one!””
33. “Fish: An animal that grows fastest between the time it’s caught and the time a fisherman describes it to his friends”
34. “If you don’t like fishing, raise your hand! —- Now slap yourself because you are an idiot!”
35. “Comedians get jokes offered to them, rock stars get women and underwear thrown on stage, and I get guys that want to take me fishing.” ~ Les Claypool
36. “I do hunt and I do fish, and I don’t apologize to anybody for hunting and fishing.” ~ General Norman Schwarzkopf
37. “Fishing is a delusion entirely surrounded by liars in old clothes.” ~ Don Marquis
38. “If my keys are missin’ I’ve gone fishin’!”
39. “I once gave up fishing. It was the most terrifying weekend of my life.”
40. “Somebody behind you, while you are fishing, is as bad as someone looking over your shoulder while you write a letter to your girl.” ~ Ernest Hemingway
41. “There are only two occasions when Americans respect privacy, especially in Presidents. Those are prayer and fishing.” ~ Herbert Hoover
42. “If fishing is religion, fly fishing is high church.” ~ Tom Brokaw
43. “I’ve managed to convince my wife that somewhere in the Bible it says, “Man cannot have too many shotguns and fishing poles’.” ~ General Norman Schwarzkopf
44. “I only make movies to finance my fishing.” ~ Lee Marvin
45. “There he stands, draped in more equipment than a telephone lineman, trying to outwit an organism with a brain no bigger than a breadcrumb, and getting licked in the process.” ~ Paul O’Neil
46. “Three-fourths of the Earth’s surface is water, and one-fourth is land. It is quite clear that the good Lord intended us to spend triple the amount of time fishing as taking care of the lawn.” ~ Chuck Clark
47. “We ask a simple question and that is all we wish”¦ Are all fishermen liars or do only liars fish? ~ William Sherwood Fox
48. “The only thing bad about winning the pennant is that you have to manage the All-Star Game the next year. I’d rather go fishing for three days.” ~ Whitey Herzog
49. “It’s okay to eat fish because they don’t have any feelings.” ~ Kurt Cobain
50. “Scholars have long known that fishing eventually turns men into philosophers. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to buy decent tackle on a philosopher’s salary.” ~ Patrick McManus
51. “I don’t exaggerate – I just remember big.” ~ Chi Chi Rodriguez
52. “Nothing makes a fish bigger than almost being caught.”
53. “A bad day of fishing is better than a good day of work.”
54. “Calling fishing a hobby is like calling brain surgery a job.” ~ Paul Schullery
55. “”¦of all the liars among mankind, the fisherman is the most trustworthy.” ~ William Sherwood Fox
56. “You need a good gardener and a good fisherman. The cook is not required.” ~ Alain Ducasse
57. “Anyone can be a fisherman in May.” ~ Ernest Hemingway
58. “Most of the world is covered by water. A fisherman’s job is simple: Pick out the best parts.” ~ Charles Waterman
59. “All the romance of trout fishing exists in the mind of the angler and is in no way shared by the fish.” ~ Harold F. Blaisdell
60. “The best way to a fisherman’s heart is through his fly.”
61. “Creeps and idiots cannot conceal themselves for long on a fishing trip.” ~ John Gierach
62. “There are two types of fishermen – those who fish for sport and those who fish for fish.”
63. “What a tourist terms a plague of insects, the fly fisher calls a great hatch.” ~ Patrick F. McManus
64. “Good things come to those who bait.”
65. “Even if you’ve been fishing for three hours and haven’t gotten anything except poison ivy and sunburn, you’re still better off than the worm.”
66. “May the holes in your net be no larger than the fish in it.” ~ Irish Proverb
67. “You cannot catch trout with dry breeches.” ~ Spanish Proverb
68. “Many men go fishing all of their lives without knowing that it is not fish they are after.” ~ Henry David Thoreau
69. “Some go to church and think about fishing, others go fishing and think about God.” ~ Tony Blake
70. “If fishing is interfering with your business, give up your business.” ~ Alfred W. Miller
71. “Sometimes, when the water is quiet, you can almost hear the fish laughing at you.”
72. “Of course I talk to myself when I’m fishing. Sometimes I need expert advice.”
73. “Procrastifishing: the art of going fishing when you should be doing something else.”
74. “Happiness is a big fish, and a witness.”
75. “My dad was a fisherman, but he quit because his net income wasn’t enough.”
76. “You can tune a guitar, but you can’t tuna fish unless, of course, you play bass.”
77. “There is no losing in fishing. You either catch or you learn. Either way, it’s better than work.”
78. “Fishing is the sport of drowning worms.”
79. “I am not against golf, since I cannot but suspect it keeps armies of the unworthy from discovering trout.” ~ Paul O’NeillÂ
80. “It has always been my private conviction that any man who pits his intelligence against a fish and loses has it coming.” ~ John Steinbeck
81. “As no man is born an artist, so no man is born an angler.” ~ Izaak Walton
82. “If I fished only to capture fish, my fishing trips would have ended long ago.” ~ Zane Grey
83. “I used to like fishing because I thought it had some larger significance. Now I like fishing because it’s the one thing I can think of that probably doesn’t.” ~ John Gierach
84. “All Americans believe that they are born fishermen. For a man to admit a distaste for fishing would be like denouncing mother-love or hating moonlight.” ~ John Steinbeck
85. “I got 99 problems and fishin’ solves all of ”˜em” ~ Earl Dibbles Jr.
86. “There is no use in walking five miles to fish when you can depend on being just as unsuccessful near home.” ~ Mark Twain
87. “Game fish are too valuable to be caught only once.” ~ Lee Wulff
88. “Carpe Diem” does not mean “fish of the day.”
89. “Many of the most highly publicized events of my presidency are not nearly as memorable or significant in my life as fishing with my daddy.” ~ Jimmy Carter
90. “A fisherman is a jerk on one end of the line waiting for a jerk on the other.”
91. “A fishing rod is a stick with a hook at one end and a fool at the other.” ~ Samuel Johnson
92. “All fishermen are liars; it’s an occupational disease with them like housemaid’s knee or editor’s ulcers.” ~ Beatrice Gray CookÂ
93. “A worm is a small, reluctant animal used to capture a larger reluctant animal.”
94. “As the evening sky faded from a salmon color to a sort of flint gray, I thought back to the salmon I caught that morning, and how gray he was, and how I named him Flint.” ~ Jack HandeyÂ
95. “Always think like a fish, no matter how weird it gets.”
96. “Even a fish wouldn’t get into trouble if he kept his mouth shut.”
97. “Even eminent chartered accountants are known, in their capacity as fishermen, blissfully to ignore differences between seven and 10 inches, half a pound and two pounds, three fish and a dozen fish.” ~ William Sherwood Fox
98. “Fisherman’s prayer: Lord, help me to catch fish so large, that even I, in the telling of it, never need to lie.”
99. “Everyone should believe in something. I believe I’ll go fishing.” ~ Henry David Thoreau
100. “I fish better with a lit cigar; some people fish better with talent.” ~ Nick Lyons
Final Thoughts
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From all of us here at Kayak Help, we hope you’ve enjoyed this collection of funny fishing quotes. It makes us smile hoping we brought even the slightest smile (and hopefully a little chuckle) to your face!
